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Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 7, 2018 18:20:33 GMT
smoothcriminal - most light jacks aren't 6 points (or free). Also, what light jacks have a P+S 16, Rat 6, boosted to hit Spray 10? Also, Rager spam is about a million times more manageable than Marauder spam. I think Mad Dog spam needs to be tested, just to avoid any possible repetition of Mad Dogs of War 3.0, but I'm not overly frightened of these changes.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 7, 2018 17:57:54 GMT
Calling it now, no way those Tankers (especially the supression tanker) goes live as it is. Pow 16, spray 10, boosted attack rolls against warriors...x2? For 6 points? And that much survivability? We'd never see infantry again. It's a special attack, so believe it's only a single spray, not 2 Hmm. Missed that. Still, seems insane. Especially since it has an uncharacteristically high RAT for Khador.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 7, 2018 17:51:25 GMT
Calling it now, no way those Tankers (especially the supression tanker) goes live as it is. Pow 16, spray 10, boosted attack rolls against warriors...x2? For 6 points? And that much survivability? We'd never see infantry again.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 7, 2018 17:29:02 GMT
Well, we have a unit that makes small forests, 2 casters with Wild Growth and a feat that makes a forest... We can be pro-active in ways to leverage tracker. Leveraging forests you create is...cute. Mostly, it just amounts to potentially ameliorating a few order of activation issues. You can always activate your caster/sentry stone/etc. after the model with Tracker has gone, after all. Also doesn't really change the fact that most of our living beasts lack pathfinder (and thus have a hard time taking advantage of it) or that our best living beast (arguably) already has Pathfinder.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 7, 2018 0:01:16 GMT
When I start loosing games with my out-of-theme lists then I will correct my opinion. Until then I am anything but disingenuous. Tournament players aren't every single player in this hobby of toy soldiers. I'm not a tournament player. I'm not claiming to be. I never once made the argument that anything I was saying SOLELY applied to tournaments. I actually take casual games into account and focus my perspective on them because they make up a much greater majority of the amount of players and games. I would ask that you give some consideration to the game outside the narrow scope of tournament only gameplay. Until then, you are welcome to believe in "Tournament players have this opinion I agree with therefore it is FACT". Enjoy your day. When it comes to making an argument to justify some new tech, personal win/loss record is essentially meaningless in a casual environment. Tournament results are important. This. exactly. The fact that you're stomping scrubs (to put it coarsely) with unoptimized lists - even if said scrubs are using the hottest tech in their respective factions - means precisely nothing when it comes to faction balance. Unless your builds can stand up to top-tier lists piloted by skilled opponents (AKA, the people that typically make up the majority of attendees at Cons) they're not competitive. Hell, even if you personally can pilot a 'suboptimal' list to victory against skilled and optimized opponents doesn't mean much from a statistical standpoint. Maybe you exploited a meta-weakness that nobody else saw. Maybe you're an extremely strong player (see: JVM et al's ability to run whatever crap they feel like, and generally do well with it). Maybe you had hot dice, or got lucky in pairings, or in list chicken. Unless it's replicable, it's just a statistical outlier. As for balancing for anything other than the top levels of play...if the history of Warmachine, (and virtually every competitive game out there) has taught us anything, it's that balancing for the casuals is a recipe for disaster. A high skill cap for an OP caster (that might keep casuals away) doesn't make them less capable of dominating high level play, a weird OP interaction between pieces that casuals won't see will still be abused in high level play, etc. Balancing the game for casual simply makes for a worse game.
The reverse, however, is not true. Balancing the game from the top down does not make the game worse for casual players (except casual players who enjoy stomping other casual players, in which case...good riddance.)
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Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 6, 2018 19:13:48 GMT
@forever_Blight - you're being disingenuous. Playing out of theme is not a particularly valid option. The point about the 'free heavy' was that only the best 'super secret tech' is ever going to be capable of balancing out an extra 12-16 (or 24) points...and applying that tech will require a much higher skill threshold, and be more dependent on luck, than the person spamming free crap in theme (due to a lack of redundancy).
Hell, if you think playing out of theme is such a great option, why aren't we seeing more people taking out-of-theme lists to Cons? These are some of the best players in the game, if they collectively don't think that an option is worth it, that's a pretty good indication that the option IS NOT in fact, worth it.
Free points, free rules, and - especially in any theme that's gone through CID - layered buffs and synergies between models making playing out of theme typically a bad idea. If themes were removed from the game (I wish), would the old Wurmwood lists still be strong? Yes. Does that mean Wurmwood is still a strong caster in a world where themes DO exist? No. He's just not that much better (if he is better at all) than Krueger2 (who does fit in theme) that it's worth playing points down and out of theme, and you lose quite a lot with him by playing IN theme (seriously, why doesn't he fit in Secret Masters, shit theme though it is?)
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Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 5, 2018 0:46:17 GMT
Because rolling to hit is also rolling to dodge. It's accuracy vs how hard the target is to hit. So if there's a chance that the target could get out of the way, that's represented by a roll to hit. Then shouldn't the opponent roll to dodge and move their models away from the spray? The game is not a simulation...lots of things don't make sense by any kind of real-world logic.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 4, 2018 20:25:11 GMT
I don't know what benefit to lose, but what if the theme gave one non-AD unit advance move for each heavy warjack? I mean, Circle doesn't have warjacks, so... Honestly, I would be very happy to see the 'warbeasts gain snacking' benefit become something more splashy. Looking at the other 'infantry themes' with Jack/Beast benefits, the benefits given are much splashier. Carapace, Hand of Vengeance, Blessed, Flank etc. I guess you could argue that free corpse tokens is the splashy theme benefit for DevHost, but it really feels more like something Tharn/Death Wolves just need to be decent at their core job.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 3, 2018 21:36:18 GMT
I really don’t think a +2 Pow And Arm swing is broken at all. Look at anamag. She does way more than that on Feat Turn and applies Grevious wounds... Pow 17 ravagers are fine. If you commit all 6 to a heavy it should die...that’s 21 points if models man. Anamag is warrior model only though no? Feat wise she gives +2 str and grievous? The rest is again comparing spell lists. Which we all agree kromac is lacking. And again comparing support caster to a beat stick caster. Kromac himself can lay down the beating. With one corpse token he's taking down a heavy solo. Give him some mobility spells and he's even charging for his base 7 attacks without a corpse token and taking down a heavy. I don't mind PS 17 ravagers. It's the ravager+trackers+warbeasts with extra arm and mat that I think would be a bit over the top. Give is an infantry caster that can buff +2 str and I wouldnt care. And ravagers are 16pts. If they get brutal charge back, which I really hope they do, they can drop an armor 20 heavy without any tokens. It would be nice to get something to help them up the field. Maybe drop a pt of armor for blade shield to combat shooting? Anamag's feat gives dark shroud. It's functionally +2 damage to the entire army. It's also (realistically) quite a weak feat, all things considered - it's only in combination with her spell list that it becomes strong. Anamag's personal output is also substantial. She's not (quite) Kromac level durability, but at the start of CID she could reliably one round a buffed colossal on feat turn...and she only lost one point of strength since that point. She's certainly not just a support caster. Ravagers are 21 points with the UA, who you always take. Even if he's taken for free, that's still a free slot being used on him. Also, if you can get 6 feated heavy infantry (which die to shooting, with a caster that does nothing to deliver them) onto an Arm 20 heavy, it should die. Look, If I get 6 Butcher1 feated iron fangs onto an Arm 20 jack (P+S 13, 4 dice damage on the charge = 7 damage, they kill it. If they have Fury on them, it only takes 4. Iron Fangs are a cheaper unit, with 12 models instead of 7 (so you only have to deliver have of them, rather than nearly the whole unit) that are about as hard to kill with shooting as Ravagers. Same goes for any list with the capacity to swing armor. The funny thing is, Kromac2 would probably still not get taken with Tharn, because he does nothing to deliver them (which is the #1 thing they need solved in most matchups).
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Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 3, 2018 2:15:49 GMT
I agree with you on pretty much every point, but I will say (as niche and specific as it may be) that Grayle in DH is quite an effective counter to Ghost Fleet, due to Ghost Fleet not dealing particularly well at all with stealth which allows his feat to actually deliver ravagers, and his personal resilience to Deneghra's BS. This was the Polish WTC answer to Ghost Fleet last WTC, afaik. We definitely have answers to ghost fleet, that was 100% never something I was trying to say. We definitely have game into it, but it's nothing as simple or easy as dropping a theme to RFP them all. I'm kind of surprised at Grayle DH, though...it lacks RFP, and my experience with playing Tharn into GF is that it's a nightmare on your clock, since the GF player only have to push models forwards at you, while you've got to play more carefully and conservatively, while also dealing with the time-sinks that are piles of corpse tokens and overtake moves.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 3, 2018 0:59:37 GMT
Ghost fleet dies quite easily to circle actually. We have a theme that gives every warbeast RFP. Scarsfell from stealth could easily chase down the leader and RFP it. And we have anti infantry out the ass. At pow 10 they aren't exactly "insane swings" every turn. Pow 15 against 2 targets max, if her arc-nodes made it alive into range. And again, you're comparing SINGLE ATTACKS PER TURN units to multi attacks per turn units. On rat 4, 6 with the defense buff. Or 14 pow on the cutlass at .5 range mat 5(7). That's 10 attacks at the same price point you can get between 12 to 24 attacks at a farther range. Now banes are pretty brutal. They hit hard at around 16 per attack and with the debuffs could put a serious hurt on heavies. But they move at speed 5. Are defense 12, and are 1 inch reach. And since Denny can only debuff one or two targets a turn, for them to hit that hard they'd have to be focusing the same target. At 1 inch reach you're getting maybe 4-5 around a target. Assuming Denny can deliver them at all. Obviously Kromac has the same problem delivering Tharn. Which is a spell list problem. And if you can purge her debuffs she's blowing 6 focus a turn. You guys keep comparing these warmachine casters to horde casters expecting them to be point for point. Warmachine needs their focus to use their heavies. Hordes do not. Normal jacks have 1 maybe 2 initials and 3 focus. Your average warbeast has 2-3 and 4 fury. You're talking 5 attacks versus 7 IF the caster has focus left to super power. If not, you need to buy empowers for 2-4 points a piece. That raises the cost of running your jacks effectively. At your point, your model isn't 20 points. It's 20 + choir(4-6) + vassalsx2(6) both of which have to be standing within 3 inches of him to buff him. Standing right out in the open at 12/12. And his caster spends 4(3) of 6 focus on him a turn. Leaving him with little for his other jacks. So if you kill the units standing around him, but don't kill the entire unit, then yes he's hitting that hard and moving that far. So PS+23x5+extra die for charge. You would do around 54 damage to a 20 arm model. Ghetorix doing 16 + 19 + 4 extra attacks. Ends up doing 33 damage to a 20 arm model. Considerably less, but at a true 20 points, and zero cost to Kromacs fury. Which AGAIN leads more to a shitty spell list than feat. Now on feat turn, he's doing 18 21 +4 extra attacks. 47 damage to a 20 arm model on a true 20 point model zero resource cost to Kromac. Add the Gorax for 7 points for primal and he's doing 20-23 +4 extra at 27 points. 57 Damage. Still less points spent than the Avatar. And the avatar charging at 15" isn't getting buffed next round or empowered. Significantly cuts down next turns production. But so does primal. Killing the choir significantly drops his production, or killing the vassals. And to trigger his movement and buffs, you're killing these people. Choose not to kill the infantry by him, and he's not that big of a threat at all. His buffs are in the hands of your opponent. But yes, I will agree Durst runs jacks better than Kromac runs beasts. Kromacs spell list needs an upgrade for sure. Now change Dursts feat to give +2 damage, armor and mat, to EVERYONE in his army. At a 14" +large base range. Still sound fair to you? And he can't even run good infantry in his theme. He's purely jacks. I'd rather see Kromac get a better spell list and Tharns get their own buff, than have Kromacs feat be the "buff" for everyone. Again. Try it out, let us know what your opponents thought. And any other arguments keep in mind, focus is harder to spread out for buffs and jacks. You get more attacks with fury, and if a caster buffs their entire army, do they have multi attack infantry? If a caster has an awesome feat, what does their stat block look like? I like the comparison between Kromac and Durst because they have similar builds. Kromac obviously hits more and for harder. Maybe take the warbeast and living portion out of his feat and make it battlegroup specific, so Kromac himself can mulch at 60 damage during feat turn. I'm telling you now though, I highly doubt they're going to rework his spell list, make his feat FFM AND buff the ravagers to a place where they'd be useful under any caster. Here's where you're wrong... 1. Devourer's Host gives SNACKING. Snacking RFPs living models only. Ghost Fleet contains all of...one living model, namely the caster. 2. Circle has a fairly large amount of highly situational, largely caster-locked RFP. Hellmouth, Eruption of Life, etc. It does not have a ton of non-caster specific RFP. 3. Trying to out-attrition ghost fleet without RFP is asking to lose on clock in most cases. This is especially true with Tharn. 4. Ghost Pirates are POW 10...with gang, for pow 12, with a potential 7 point armor swing from feat, dark shroud (wraith engine) and parasite on feat turn, and a 5 point swing on other turns. That's swinging at P+S 19 on feat turn, for the record...unlike those pesky Tharn maybe swinging at POW 17 (IF they get brutal charge, IF Kromac2 gets the feat change). You're relying on two hypothetical CID changes to declare the first one 'broken,' yet the proposed changes STILL don't take Tharn to the damage potential of Ghost Pirates. 5. Tharn die. It's pretty much what they do. They die on the way in to low-mid POW shooting, they die when they get touched by the average infantry charge...they die. Keeping corpse tokens on them from turn to turn just shouldn't happen against a decent opponent. By contrast, pirates whole shtick is that the don't die, unless you bring some very specific tech, which Circle doesn't have particularly great access to, compared to factions with Themes giving out wholesale RFP. Seriously, I sincerely doubt you've even played this matchup. As for comparing Warmachine casters to Hordes casters...this myth that Hordes needs to be weaker than warmachine can seriously die in a fire. The disparity between fury and focus is nowhere near the level in Mk3 that it was in Mk2 (if it even exists at all), yet Hordes pays for it by having: - more expensive warbeasts by a factor of ~40-50%. This applies even after the relevant CID changes. - warbeasts that hit less hard than comparable warjacks - generally worse infantry - worse minions than Warmachine has mercenaries - worse warlocks than warmachine has warcasters.
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Cid
Feb 2, 2018 21:24:29 GMT
Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 2, 2018 21:24:29 GMT
krigsol - if you cannot compare units across factions, most forms of beta-testing would be virtually worthless. Unit A in faction A outperforms similar unit B in faction B, unit C in faction C, etc...clearly that tells us nothing about the relative power level of unit A /sarcasm. As I have said many, many times, you DO have to account for relative availability of faction support when comparing units across factions. That does not mean that cross-faction comparisons are useless. Also, as with Lanz, you're arguing in subjectives and generalities rather than providing objective comparisons to back up your argument. macdaddy - arguing with these people seems to me to be about as productive as arguing with Cryx players about Satyxis. Less so, actually, because this isn't the CID forums, and the devs aren't reading these posts, and thus superior argumentation doesn't matter a flying Firetruck.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 2, 2018 7:10:59 GMT
Considering my #1 suggestion was that the mount and weapon lose a point of POW, I'd be 100% fine with that change. I can't say I disagree. I honestly think I'd rather their weapon be a straight POW 14 over a brutal charge 13. It doesn't make sense that these massive ogrun monsters somehow hit softer than their normal ogrun counterparts (warmongers). As for the mount, I feel its circumstantial enough to not really matter one way or another. As for the point on Pathfinder, I feel like thats going to stay for fluff reasons. Normal Ogrun don't have it (except through a mini-feat or relentless charge), but the Chosen are blighted up and all dragony. So, yeah. I'm honestly not sure how much a difference it really makes though, as most factions have speed buffs galore and ways to ignore terrain through handing out forms of pathfinder and maybe even flight (don't quote me on that). You also have to consider that the relatively high speed of the Chosen and their Pathfinder being balanced out by the rest of the army being slow as dirt (aside from the Rotwings, but they're 13/11 defensive stats, so... Yeah. Fragile enough to warrant their own separate discussion, really). Also that statement obviously doesn't extend to warbeasts as much, but you're likely to not bring too many warbeasts in a Primal Terrors army to begin with... I'd be completely fine with P+S 14, no brutal charge, and a POW 13 mount attack. Same output on turns they're not charging, but without the same alpha potential. Encourages you to jam with them, or use them to absorb the alpha then punch back, which is more their role anyways. As for pathfinder, I don't doubt it'll stay, and have no problem with it staying. I'm just damn sick of people discounting it as an advantage and a piece of 'flexibility' Chosen have that other Cavalry don't.
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Cid
Feb 2, 2018 6:29:30 GMT
Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 2, 2018 6:29:30 GMT
So it's important enough to talk about, but not important enough to take a solo for. No. There are competing priorities that may be more important, and may edge out the need to take a pathfinder granting solo. Doesn't change the fact that Chosen have the innate advantage of pathfinder, that they don't have to pay 4 points extra for it, and that they can't have the ability removed by killing said solo (which at the very least makes me more cautious about sticking non-pathfinder troops in concealment-or-cover granting difficult terrain, which the Chosen can use at will).
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Cid
Feb 2, 2018 5:04:55 GMT
Post by oncomingstorm on Feb 2, 2018 5:04:55 GMT
Pathfinder is definitely not normal for heavy cav. Ferox and Banes have it easy; Uhlans only get it on the charge. Storm lances, steelheads, tuffalo, destors, & vengers (only if your opponent allows), or 5/8 heavy cav units in the game struggle with pathfinder. It's basically universal among light cav (though that's not a distinction anymore); soulhunters are the one skirmishing cav unit without it native. I wonder why those factions don't take Rhupert anymore, anyways? I guess because Tough isn't as good as it used to be. With theme lists open to a merc slot now, if Cygnar Protectorate and Mercs want pathfinder, they can have it. A SINGLE merc solo slot. Often that goes to Ragman, or Eilish, or Lanyssa, or a specific tech piece. Even if you do take Rhupert, that's 4 points to give a unit something Chosen get included, from a model that can be removed to deprive you of that ability.
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